Traditional optical aluminium grades such as Al 6061 are intensively used for making optical components for applications ranging from mould insert fabrication to laser machine making. However, because of their irregular microstructure and relative inhomogeneity of material properties at micro scale, traditional optical aluminium may exhibit some difficulties when ultra-high precision diamond turned. Inhomogeneity and micro-variation in the material properties combined with uneven and coarse microstructure may cause unacceptable surface finish and accelerated tool wear, especially in grooving operation when the diamond tool edge is fully immersed in the material surface. Recently, new grades of optical aluminium that are featured by their ultra-fine microstructure and improved material properties have been developed to overcome the problem of high tool wear rates. The new aluminium grades have been developed using rapid solidification process which results in extremely small grain sizes combined with improved mechanical properties. The current study is concerned with investigating the performance of single-point diamond turning when grooving two grades of rapidly solidified aluminium (RSA) grades: RSA905 which is a high-alloyed aluminium grade and RSA443 which has a high silicon content. In this study, two series of experiments employed to create radial microgrooves on the two RSA grades. The surface roughness obtained on the groove surface is measured when different combinations of cutting parameters are used. Cutting speed is varied while feed rate and depth of cut were kept constant. The results show that groove surface roughness produced on RSA443 is higher than that obtained on RSA905. Also, the paper reports on the effect of cutting speed on surface roughness for each RSA grade.